militarization

This article originally appeared on Common Dreams. Another week, another series of school and university shootings in the US, and another chance to hear phrases such as “active shooter” and “campus lockdown”…

International news agency Al-Jazeera (which also happened to recently purchase Current TV here in the states, y’all) asks whether the United States’ police forces have become too militarized. For those of us who get our news from independent, mostly online sources, this seems obvious. Anyone who was involved with or follows the Occupy movement has seen how local and state law enforcement have refitted themselves as paramilitary organizations.

Each week, seemingly every day, there are dozens of stories of police harassment, abuse, brutality, and infringement on civil rights; usually against people of color. It may not be that this is a trend on the rise, but as others have suggested, that there are simply more cameras and recording devices out there facilitating our constitutional right to keep the cops accountable. But there can be no doubt that the addition of SWAT tactics, zero tolerance, racial profiling, stop-and-frisk, warantless surveillance and wiretapping, armored tank-like vehicles, severe use of ‘nonlethal’ weapons, and the trigger-happy cowboys themselves have increased faster than you can say ‘counter-terrorism’ or ‘fusion center.’ Add in some DHS-supplied drones and you’ve got a local militia with a fraternal code of silence and protection from the very laws they were once sworn to uphold.